HuskyHawk
The triumphant return of the Blues Brothers.
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2011
- Messages
- 32,695
- Reaction Score
- 85,065
Which is why I asked the question. There aren't the usual storm drains every 50 yards we have in New England. So it's still not the infrastructure to deal with the rain much of the country gets routinely. I realize the ground is hard and that causes run-off, but didn't it just rain a lot recently? Was hoping that helped make it more absorbative.I've read this a few times on the boneyard and well, it's just wrong. All of our 'rivers' are concrete to deal with run off, Certain streets have 18" high curbs to act as run off corridors. There are massive storm drains. There are huge areas for holding storm water. The infrastructure is there.
There is only so much you can do when 1) the soil isn't the type that will hold a lot of moisture and 2) you are surrounded by hundreds of miles of mountains up to 10,000ft tall that all run into LA and 3) you get rain rates of over an inch an hour from the super saturated warm pacific ocean.
We are in fact built to deal with huge rainfalls. But just like you can't build everything in the gulf to survive a direct hit from a cat 5, you can't get enough infrastructure to deal with the really massive storms. And hillsides have been sliding for millions of years - it's in their nature. Back east just dealt with it a long long time ago compared to the west.
I completely appreciate the mountains, that's why Vermont took so much damage from Irene, the mountains funnel the water. So it's not just volume, but speed of flow. When I lived in Lawrence, we had a huge, huge flood, but the Kansas river mostly spreads out over miles. In Vermont, the White River became a raging force of destruction.
Hoping for the best for SoCal.